Brandon Dail
@brandondail.com
Staff Engineer at Discord working on Design Systems, Accessibility, Other Stuff™️ Collage & generative plotter artist 👋
5 years at @discord.com as of today! 🥳
July 14, 2025 at 10:13 PM
5 years at @discord.com as of today! 🥳
Reposted by Brandon Dail
Ex-farm worker here.
We need to talk about this whole "But a living wage for farm workers would spike the cost of food!" thing.
Not true AT ALL.
Y'all don't understand how fast experienced farm workers are.
The average tomato picker pulls 650lbs per hour.
At $20/hr, that's $0.03/lb for labor.
We need to talk about this whole "But a living wage for farm workers would spike the cost of food!" thing.
Not true AT ALL.
Y'all don't understand how fast experienced farm workers are.
The average tomato picker pulls 650lbs per hour.
At $20/hr, that's $0.03/lb for labor.
July 13, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Ex-farm worker here.
We need to talk about this whole "But a living wage for farm workers would spike the cost of food!" thing.
Not true AT ALL.
Y'all don't understand how fast experienced farm workers are.
The average tomato picker pulls 650lbs per hour.
At $20/hr, that's $0.03/lb for labor.
We need to talk about this whole "But a living wage for farm workers would spike the cost of food!" thing.
Not true AT ALL.
Y'all don't understand how fast experienced farm workers are.
The average tomato picker pulls 650lbs per hour.
At $20/hr, that's $0.03/lb for labor.
If you’re a React Native expert and want to help us make @discord.com better, hit me up 🤙 we’re looking!
June 18, 2025 at 4:20 AM
If you’re a React Native expert and want to help us make @discord.com better, hit me up 🤙 we’re looking!
had a daughter the other day, we’re big fans ❤️
April 15, 2025 at 2:21 AM
had a daughter the other day, we’re big fans ❤️
we (@discord.com) rewrote our color token system to support these new themes, and its exciting 👀
in short: color tokens are defined using a constraint-based system where colors are defined with contrast ratios.
change a base color and all affected tokens update in all themes, preserving contrast ✨
in short: color tokens are defined using a constraint-based system where colors are defined with contrast ratios.
change a base color and all affected tokens update in all themes, preserving contrast ✨
Revamped Overlay & Refreshed Desktop Give Game Time a Boost
We’re releasing a new and improved version of the Game Overlay, along with a refreshed desktop app so you can further customize Discord to your style.
discord.com
March 26, 2025 at 1:19 AM
we (@discord.com) rewrote our color token system to support these new themes, and its exciting 👀
in short: color tokens are defined using a constraint-based system where colors are defined with contrast ratios.
change a base color and all affected tokens update in all themes, preserving contrast ✨
in short: color tokens are defined using a constraint-based system where colors are defined with contrast ratios.
change a base color and all affected tokens update in all themes, preserving contrast ✨
Whoever did the lighting in Kingdom Come II deserves whatever the award for really good lighting is
February 12, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Whoever did the lighting in Kingdom Come II deserves whatever the award for really good lighting is
angry guy with amnesia:
February 11, 2025 at 2:49 PM
angry guy with amnesia:
$500 pack of cards casually sitting on the shelf 🫣
February 10, 2025 at 1:52 AM
$500 pack of cards casually sitting on the shelf 🫣
Not the Canada commercial lmaoooooo
February 10, 2025 at 1:18 AM
Not the Canada commercial lmaoooooo
my wife said “I think they can make a comeback” two seconds before that last interception. Sorry about that (or you’re welcome)
February 10, 2025 at 1:07 AM
my wife said “I think they can make a comeback” two seconds before that last interception. Sorry about that (or you’re welcome)
long overdue, but I did it 🫡
February 9, 2025 at 9:18 PM
long overdue, but I did it 🫡
Reposted by Brandon Dail
Somehow "Elon Musk Is a Genius" and "Elon Musk Doesn't Know How Hands Work" are being said by a lot of the same people
January 21, 2025 at 6:46 AM
Somehow "Elon Musk Is a Genius" and "Elon Musk Doesn't Know How Hands Work" are being said by a lot of the same people
hearing a lot of good things about TikTok recently, downloading it to see what all the fuss is about 🙏
January 19, 2025 at 12:56 AM
hearing a lot of good things about TikTok recently, downloading it to see what all the fuss is about 🙏
[as the Xenomorph extends its inner jaw to kill me]: oooooo big stretch!
January 16, 2025 at 2:31 PM
[as the Xenomorph extends its inner jaw to kill me]: oooooo big stretch!
Reposted by Brandon Dail
In the meantime, as a reader: don’t trust any articles attributed to “staff,” and don’t trust any articles that don’t include quotes from scientists completely uninvolved in the original publication. Science is a gradual, meandering, back and forth process; sometimes we have to let it play out.
December 27, 2024 at 2:59 PM
In the meantime, as a reader: don’t trust any articles attributed to “staff,” and don’t trust any articles that don’t include quotes from scientists completely uninvolved in the original publication. Science is a gradual, meandering, back and forth process; sometimes we have to let it play out.
Reposted by Brandon Dail
Which brings us to the scicomm point: we gotta get better at distinguishing between “here’s someone’s speculative idea that they just published” and “here’s a new discovery.” This is the former.
December 27, 2024 at 2:52 PM
Which brings us to the scicomm point: we gotta get better at distinguishing between “here’s someone’s speculative idea that they just published” and “here’s a new discovery.” This is the former.
Reposted by Brandon Dail
What does it mean for something to be Turing complete?
I answer this question, and more, through a series of fully interactive Turing machine simulations! Play, pause, step forwards and backwards, and even write your own Turing machine programs in my latest blog post.
samwho.dev/turing-machi...
I answer this question, and more, through a series of fully interactive Turing machine simulations! Play, pause, step forwards and backwards, and even write your own Turing machine programs in my latest blog post.
samwho.dev/turing-machi...
December 20, 2024 at 10:33 PM
What does it mean for something to be Turing complete?
I answer this question, and more, through a series of fully interactive Turing machine simulations! Play, pause, step forwards and backwards, and even write your own Turing machine programs in my latest blog post.
samwho.dev/turing-machi...
I answer this question, and more, through a series of fully interactive Turing machine simulations! Play, pause, step forwards and backwards, and even write your own Turing machine programs in my latest blog post.
samwho.dev/turing-machi...
the worst part about being a parent is that even the most cookie-cutter, clichéd story can make you cry if it happens to be about kids or parenting
it’s like a cheat code the world uses on you that you can’t disable
it’s like a cheat code the world uses on you that you can’t disable
December 20, 2024 at 1:48 PM
the worst part about being a parent is that even the most cookie-cutter, clichéd story can make you cry if it happens to be about kids or parenting
it’s like a cheat code the world uses on you that you can’t disable
it’s like a cheat code the world uses on you that you can’t disable
is there any existing research on what the best contrast ratio for readability is? WCAG gives a lower bound but there’s also such a thing as too much contrast so I’m curious if there’s been any formal studies on where the sweet spot is
December 19, 2024 at 5:14 PM
is there any existing research on what the best contrast ratio for readability is? WCAG gives a lower bound but there’s also such a thing as too much contrast so I’m curious if there’s been any formal studies on where the sweet spot is
I try to be as honest as I can with my kids, and sometimes that’s hard to reconcile with the fact that we as a society have decided to collectively lie about a magical, immortal old man who sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake
December 9, 2024 at 3:36 PM
I try to be as honest as I can with my kids, and sometimes that’s hard to reconcile with the fact that we as a society have decided to collectively lie about a magical, immortal old man who sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake
opening our monorepo's VSCode workspace was totally killing my CPU with rg processes. It brought my M3 Max to a halt for like five minutes.
Turns out it was the Tailwind extension I had installed for another project trying to find a tailwind.config.* file in our monorepo 🫠
Turns out it was the Tailwind extension I had installed for another project trying to find a tailwind.config.* file in our monorepo 🫠
December 5, 2024 at 4:14 PM
opening our monorepo's VSCode workspace was totally killing my CPU with rg processes. It brought my M3 Max to a halt for like five minutes.
Turns out it was the Tailwind extension I had installed for another project trying to find a tailwind.config.* file in our monorepo 🫠
Turns out it was the Tailwind extension I had installed for another project trying to find a tailwind.config.* file in our monorepo 🫠
can you guess what my favorite album was this year
December 5, 2024 at 3:42 AM
can you guess what my favorite album was this year
One tension here is that current gen LLMs can have a ~high success rate for accurately predicting what a real answer would be (depending on your topic), so there’s undeniably some utility there
but knowing when it’s NOT accurate is increasingly difficult which means you always need to be skeptical
but knowing when it’s NOT accurate is increasingly difficult which means you always need to be skeptical
Predictive text models do not ever "answer your question"
They predict what an answer to your question would probably look like.
Which is very, very, very different
They predict what an answer to your question would probably look like.
Which is very, very, very different
I don’t think it can be emphasized enough that large language models were never intended to do math or know facts; literally all they do is attempt to sound like the text they’re given, which may or may not include math or facts. They don’t do logic or fact checking — they’re just not built for that
December 4, 2024 at 2:08 PM
One tension here is that current gen LLMs can have a ~high success rate for accurately predicting what a real answer would be (depending on your topic), so there’s undeniably some utility there
but knowing when it’s NOT accurate is increasingly difficult which means you always need to be skeptical
but knowing when it’s NOT accurate is increasingly difficult which means you always need to be skeptical
Bluesky connections on Discord are live! 🦋
November 27, 2024 at 11:24 PM
Bluesky connections on Discord are live! 🦋
Working on our color system and a novel approach we've started exploring for colors is to define them in terms of constraints: instead of picking colors for every token/theme, you specify a reference color and contrast ratio. The system does the rest.
this has a few cool advantages 👀
this has a few cool advantages 👀
November 27, 2024 at 5:50 PM
Working on our color system and a novel approach we've started exploring for colors is to define them in terms of constraints: instead of picking colors for every token/theme, you specify a reference color and contrast ratio. The system does the rest.
this has a few cool advantages 👀
this has a few cool advantages 👀